thread Re: Invoice scanning in Orders, Menu Items, Catalog & Fulfilment

Invoice scanning

Angelfoot — Wed, 20 May 2026 22:59:47 GMT

Toast is sending us seductive emails proposing this great new feature:

“Al Invoice Scanning is designed to turn one of retail's most tedious back-office tasks into a near-instant process. Here's how.

Snap a photo of any invoice with your phone or upload as a PDF and let Toast do the data entry. Scanned items are matched to your catalog automatically, and we'll flag anything new for quick review.

See exactly what changed on each invoiceso you can update your pricing before the product hits the shelf.

"Instead of taking 45 minutes to enter invoices, with Al Invoice Scanning it now takes us only about four."*

My manager us salivating over this product.

Square. ! Make this happen please!!!

Re: Invoice scanning

JasonCK — Sat, 23 May 2026 16:06:58 GMT

A simple interim setup is a receiving sheet with invoice/PDF, vendor, item, case cost, unit count, new price, and a flag for anything not already in the catalog. That gives the manager a quick review queue without changing item data blindly while you wait for Square to build this.

Re: Invoice scanning

ChrisAtGrounded — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 20:24:40 GMT

Hi Angelfoot -

I run a retail shop on Square and hit this every time we place a new order for the store, so this one's close to home. Jason's receiving sheet is more or less where everyone lands, and it works. It's just that the sheet is the job.

On the Toast comparison: Square already does document scanning, it's just in Bill Pay. It reads the invoice to pay the bill, not to receive the stock. Same document, different job, which is probably why Square feels close to this but never quite gets there.

The thing I'd push back on in that Toast email: reading the invoice isn't the hard part. Matching is. Your vendor calls it "WCAN-15A ANTIQUE 1.5L" and your catalog calls it "Brass Watering Can, Antique, 1.5 L", and extracting text doesn't tell you those are the same thing. That's what to judge any of these on, Toast's included. Ask them what happens to the lines it can't match.

In full transparency, since this is Square's own forum: I got tired enough of doing this by hand that I built software to automate it for my own shop, and have since made it available to other Square sellers. I spent years as a tech exec before buying a retail shop, and the last year inside this specific problem. So if you want to know what to look for, in Toast's or anyone's, ask and I'll tell you honestly, including what works for us and what doesn't.